Compliance Mountains to Climb

Almost half of finance executives predict they'll have to spend more to follow the rules in 2014.

Seen from an altitude of 30,000 feet, the compliance landscape that CFOs face in 2014 consists of two big mountains and a few challenging foothills. [...]

Earl Fry, CFO of Informatica, a data-integration software company, expects that the firm’s 2014 compliance budget will be at least double what it was in 2012. To be sure, some of that increase is a response to new worries about data security and stepped-up scrutiny by the Securities and Exchange Commission related to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board related to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.

Yet the predicted surge in Informatica’s compliance spending is more in tandem with the firm’s expansion than with increasing red tape, Fry says. Estimating that the $861 million company will pass the $1 billion revenue mark in 2014, he notes that the company’s global footprint, which currently covers 30 countries, increases every year, and that its employee count will rise by 15% to 20%.

Add to that a broadening platform of the firm’s product offerings, particularly featuring cloud integration, and it becomes clear that “growth in the company and the complexity of dealing with a global business and in dealing with data” is the biggest driver of compliance activity, Fry says. Click here to read the complete article.